There was an old Warcraft III map that attempted to create Final Fantasy Tactics. It had the job system, where you could swap between roles based on prerequisites of previous roles. It separated classes into magic and melee trees. The magic tree had all sorts of roles:
The game did a fantastic job of making each hero feel unique despite all of them being magic casters. Summoners had little direct magic and low damage, but could tank a lot of damage. The standard ‘wizard’ could do a huge amount of damage, but was a glasscannon.
I want each Mage specialization to offer a different type of playstyle. Multiple runs of the game provide access to different mages, and each run, you’d like choose a couple to focus on.
So my initial list of mages came from just brainstorming:
- Arcanist: Arcane magic… generalist
- Geomancer: Earth spells, some shields
- Hydrosophist: Ice/Water spells
- Chronomancer: Time spells
- Necromancer: Poison, Shadow, things like life drain and skeletons
- Druid: Nature/Earth, gryphons
- Dragonaire: Fire spells, elementals, dragon/roost mechanics.
- Alchemist: Mixing with elements or something
- Priest: Light?
- Battlemage: Gotta have someone physical, right?
I wasn’t happy with this list.
Elements provide a simple rock-paper-scissors kind of game balance, but they also provide inspiration for deeper mechanics that focus on a strategies to disable other castles. I also want to mix elements across various roles (abjuration/defense, evocation/offense, etc) but give some elements a stronger niche.
Thinking about what elements and playstyles I want to support was much more fruitful:
| Element | Playstyle | Effects |
|---|---|---|
| Fire | Offensive | Has positive feedback loops, like generating fires on hit, that can spiral out of control |
| Water/Ice | Combo oriented | Water does almost no damage, but can flood rooms, and ice can freeze / setup devastating attacks |
| Earth | Defensive | Projectiles can cause permanent damage, but most spells are about setting up walls / protection |
| Air | Utility | Air typically doesn’t do damage, but can negate status effects, spread fires, etc |
| Nature | DoT/Stack | Nature spells build over time, starting out weak but growing over time |
| Lightning | Setup | Lightning does large damage, including doing AoE, but is easy to negate |
| Time | Control | Time magic does no damage, but provides utility and control |
| Shadow | High risk, high reward | Shadow magic typically harms you and your enemy at the same time |
| Light | Defensive | Light is defensive like earth, but is focused more on health than shielding |
| Physical | Boarding | Physical damage is never impressive, but nearly impossible to avoid, boarding playstyle. |
| Arcane | ”Baseline” | Treating Arcane as the ‘standard’ baseline element, a ‘normal’ type |
Different mages can hold specializations for different elements, which gives them each a unique playstyle but also means you won’t be locked into an element and always lose a rock-paper-scissor. The idea is also to try combinations of elements to see what works well.
So I used mixes of elements to create well defined roles:
| Mage | Affinity | Playstyle |
|---|---|---|
| Apprentice | Arcane | A young mage that hasn’t yet chosen a specialization, generalist. |
| Pyromancer | Fire, Air | Create fire and spread it, burn everything!!! |
| Hydrosophist | Water, Ice | Setup for combos, then devastate your opponent before they realize what happened |
| Druid | Nature, Earth | Defensive control mage, traps, good at securing castles |
| Chronomancer | Lightning, Time | Disables sigils to unleash unexpected attacks through setup |
| Necromancer | Shadow, Summons | Manipulate the forces of life and death, overpower your enemies |
| Priest | Light, Arcane | ”Warden”, “Sentinel” also considered as names. Focuses on keeping mages alive. |
| Battlemage | Physical | Like an assassin, can board onto castles and eliminate mages before they can cast |
Now, some lovely early concept art…
Networking
On a totally different note, I also finally got the basics of client/server architecture working.
